


Two Dead Boys

by buftie



Category: Haunting in Connecticut
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-27
Updated: 2009-04-27
Packaged: 2017-10-31 19:40:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/347679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buftie/pseuds/buftie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He can't deny it. The two of them are irrevocably connected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Dead Boys

**Author's Note:**

> _"What I once was, you are; what I am, you will become."_  
>  \- Masaccio, [The Holy Trinity with the Virgin, St. John, and Two Donors](http://www.verticalsurface.co.uk/images/masaccio_trinity.jpg)

Matt wakes up disoriented, unsure if when he sleeps he dreams or lives Jonah's life. He usually doesn't feel very rested and it's hard to say if it's because he has cancer or because he's been awake in someone else's headspace when he should have been asleep. Maybe it's just a nightmare. A fucking realistic nightmare. He could swear it's more than a dream, especially when he hears desperate feet running down the stairs and sees a boy with panic on his face in broad daylight. Is he dreaming then?

When he sleeps, he feels scared and panicked and hopelessly alone. He sees a lot of people that look dead and lost, but the man - Aickman - he doesn't seem to see them.

Matt remembers seeing Jonah, the boy, throwing random things into a pillowcase, barreling down the stairs. Aickman grabbing him rough, too rough. After that, he dreams. Matt (Jonah), he's locked in the room that's supposed to be Wendy's but everything is in the wrong spot. He looks at the picture on the wall a lot, the one of the woman (in Wendy's room, it's an oval stain, yellow and gross). Her hair is short, dark. She wears a scarf (a scarf that's hidden in his pillowcase at all times). She was the only family he had left, the only family Jonah had left. His older sister, Anna. He still sees her, but how she was. He sees her how she died, gaping wounds caused by mortuary tools. Aickman's tools.

Jonah hates him, but he's filled with fear rather than hatred. He knows Aickman wouldn't kill him - he's too important. Matt knows all this because Jonah knows it, feels it, lives it.

 

He hears the whispers, _If you don't get out now you won't get out at all._ He looks around and there's nothing there, just odd looks from his mom, Wendy, and sometimes Billy. He's stopped asking, "Did you hear that?" He knows no one has. He barely even looks around anymore, but he hears it a lot. He does want out of this house more than anything, but at the same time he doesn't want to leave Jonah here alone with Aickman and all the bodies. Matt feels like he's the only person Jonah's ever been able to rely on and he's still failing. He's determined to help Jonah. To save him even if it means sacrificing himself because he's come to terms with the fact the he's sure he's dead anyway.

 

Jonah is all Matt thinks about. His dreams - he's convinced they're Jonah's memories - take up all his concentration. His mind revolves scenes and images, séances, necromancy, ghosts. Matt's in Jonah's head during a séance and he never wants to experience anything like it again. Hands joined, sweaty and clammy. Aickman's in the corner, observing, a professor from another prestigious school next to him. Jonah thinks this one's from Yale or Harvard - an Ivy League. It's like having a seizure and being completely aware of it all. Everything blurs and he shakes. The souls, they feel like they're collecting in his head until he wants it to explode. That's when he loses control, feels the ectoplasm building in his throat before it leaks from his mouth, sometimes his nose, in white, yellow, streams, a cloud of ghost-matter that no one can believe or deny. It burns and after all he wants to do is curl up and cry because the souls and spirits, they have too much emotion.

After the séance memory, Matt can't even get out of bed. He feels physically ill and has to struggle to get to the bathroom several times. He's weak and embarrassed when he doesn't make it and hates that he has to call for his mother to help him back to bed and to clean up his mess. She's worried about him, but he tells her it's just a really off day. He's sure he'll feel better the next day. She tries to get him to take the anti-nausea pills but he tells her it's no use - he'll just puke them up. 

It feels better without the meds anyway. It's just another parallel. Empty stomach contents instead of swirling ectoplasm.

 

Matt doesn't understand why him. The cancer he can deal with, he's come to terms with the idea of death. It's the wait that kills him, no pun intended. What he doesn't understand is why it had to be this house. It's draining him quicker. Jonah is draining him because he knows Matt can help. Matt can't comprehend what Jonah wants him to do and berates himself for it constantly. He and Jonah, they're two dead boys. They should be on the same page, but Matt thinks there's a page (or ten) missing from his book. No matter how many times he asks the charred remains of the boy for those pages, he never gets them. He wonders if he'll be able to help Jonah before this house swallows him and causes his family's undoing.

 

He gets it, he finally gets it. Popescu finds the remains and Matt can feel a sense of panic. A sense of _no, don't do that. It's wrong. just. don't._ But he ignores it and says nothing. He feels uneasy, Jonah can't be near him anymore. He looks and see Jonah spying through the window, begging, pleading. Matt feels weak and can't bring himself to do anything. It feels like the cancer is eating his insides slowly, draining him of everything. He can't move. Get up. He can only lie there while his mother hovers over him, trying to protect and love and save him.

 

It's all okay for a few hours. Then it all goes wrong and there are cuts all over his body. He feels each individual slice and he can practically see Aickman knifing him with the scalpel in quick motion. It's all chaos and he feel lost without Jonah being there to help tell him what is going on. With each inflicted wound something drains from inside him and he feels weaker and weaker. Before he knows it he's strapped into a gurney, medics talking in words he understands by now due to all the hospital visits. What he can't understand is how anyone could think he did this to himself. Everything stings.

At the hospital, he knows he's dying. He doesn't know why it happened so quick, but now he is dying. Jonah shows up and Matt is scared and feels whole at the same time. He gets to see what happened, feel Jonah's fear, and it jumpstarts him. Jonah is in him now. He isn't dying anymore, at least not as rapidly. He escapes, Jonah controlling and leading him to save the house and Matt's family.

Matt was in his head the whole time, but Jonah was at the front. Controlling his actions, his vocals, everything. Matt just watched helplessly hoping it would all work out. It was okay if he died if it would all work out. Burning bodies, formaldehyde. Inhaling smoke, smothered by corpses, crippled by the cancer still thick in his lungs. He doesn't think he'll make it. 

 

Coughing out the smoke, Jonah sliding out of him with it, he feels a weight lifted from him. His entire body feels lighter and healthier. He looks next to the reverend and sees Jonah, looking sad and a little lost, confused. Matt feels a pang of regret and pain in his chest, but not his lungs - his heart. Jonah had to go now, crossover. 

Jonah disappears and somehow Matt feels lost and lonely. The cancer is gone and he knows he has Jonah to thank. Jonah took it with him. Matt hopes Jonah's soul doesn't have to carry it with him and endure the fatigue and pain that came with the disease. He thinks about Jonah all of the time and is almost sad when they leave the house. Being in that house is the last thread of a connection Matt had with Jonah, even if Jonah's passed on.

He can't shake the feeling of loneliness.


End file.
